Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So the roots get water and the plant is at the right depth in the media. You don't want super tender young seedlings to dry out so if your flood times would leave the seedling spending too much time with it's roots dry, you might want to adjust the flood height temporarily, or change the timer settings temporarily or plant a little deeper and leave the media pushed away from the plant till it grows big enough.
Don't get too wrapped up in it but think about what the plant needs and try to help it out as best you can.

FYI during initial cycle up, the more time you spend flooding the beds or running water through the grow beds the faster the bacteria will establish so constant flood for the first several weeks and then gradually taper off the length of the flood cycles to what you think the plants want most can be quite effective.

You can add media beds any time. Sooner is fine, it will simply provide more space for bacteria to colonize.
Just keep in mind that you don't have much nutrient yet so don't go planting lots of super heavy feeding plants and expecting them to take off.

FYI, if you are adding duckweed to the system, it could be using up your ammonia before the bacteria have much chance to convert it. Pond and aquatic plants are known to do that. If you want to grow veggies, YOU NEED TO FEED FROM A SOURCE OUTSIDE YOUR SYSTEM. What I'm saying here is if you want to use the nutrients to grow veggies that you will take out of the system, then you need to provide a source of nutrients from outside the system. Sunlight only provides energy not nutrition. So if you are feeding your fish only duckweed grown in the system, you can really only expect the system to grow duckweed. Also, Duckweed is NOT a complete feed. People have found that they can use duckweed for only about 50% of the diet of tilapia before they start seeing weight loss instead of weight gain.

I would recommend putting off trying to grow strawberries in the system until fall 2014. I tried strawberries here at the new farm during my first year here but they were essentially a failed crop since the system pH had not yet settled in. Strawberries in FL are generally grown as annuals through the winter. Get a short day (june bearing) variety in the fall (chilled if possible) and plant out in the fall for winter harvest until it gets too hot and buggy for them in spring.

Thank you TCLynx, you have answered many questions, and raised some more lol. Too bad I am in Miami, I would love to visit your farm and take about a million notes lol.
The system seems to be stabilizing and we are happy with the chem results.
We restocked with another 20 goldfish and they seem to be happy, only loosing 1 every other day or so.
I am hoping the deaths are because of age or health from the store, this is the 3rd shop we went to, however these fish appear to be healthier.
Where can i look up fish to plant ratio? Right now we have around 18-20 fish (I cant count them, they move too fricken fast), and only have 6 plugs, and dropped quite a few seeds, but no germination yet.
Below are the numbers, not sure if the addition of the duckweed caused the drop in ammonia like you mentioned, but it is around .25, down from .5, we are feeding the fish twice a day trying to get them to raise it back. I keep waiting to wake up one morning and see the Na deep red lol.

You don't necessarily need to see nitrates in the dark red in order to get good plant growth. And some arbitrary number for a fish to plant ratio is not likely to be very helpful since not all fish, fish food, plants or seasons are created equal. A tomato plant uses up way more nutrients than a lettuce plant. Fish eat more some seasons than others and a high protein fish feed will provide more nitrogen per given weight of feed than a lower protein feed.

For a backyard system I wouldn't go chasing particular numbers as long as your system has ample filtration for your fish load and our plants/fish seem happy then there isn't much point in trying to maintain arbitrary numbers if the system works fine as it is.

I had a system that for several seasons had a nitrate level off the chart and the beds were crammed full of plants. Then one season I planted a lufa vine in one of the beds. It managed to choke most of the plants out of half the beds and in summer few things grew all that well anyway but that one lufa vine managed to bring the nitrate level in that system down to the 10 ppm or below range and the fish were eating heavily because it was warm. I've had systems with dozens of plants per fish and I've had systems with probably several fish per plant it will all depend on the plants and the fish as to what balance will be appropriate and that balance will shift by season and as the fish and plants grow.

Just an update on the system, new questions, alot of progress:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200786204318075&set=vb.154525684731727&type=2&theater